Dave-H

Yes, although I don't see any harm in keeping access to ETDAniconf.exe from the Windows Control Panel. It's no trouble to do, and doesn't involve adding any extra files. Personally when I install a driver for a something like a touchpad, the Windows Control Panel is the first place I look to find the settings options. The latest versions of Asus Smart Gesture all add an icon in the Windows Control Panel as well as the settings being accessible my double clicking the tray icon. I put the CustomerDefinition setting to "1" to match the "UI_Theme" setting. It doesn't seems to have changed anything, but I guess it should be the same. I wonder if it might be possible to suppress the "My Favorites Setting" option on the icon right click? I've never been able to actually get it to do anything meaningful. It seems to default to having notepad.exe listed, but pressing "modify" just brings up the Windows folder in Explorer. I'm not sure quite what it's intended to do, although I'm guessing that you should be able to have different touchpad settings for different programs. There were a lot of what I assume were preset settings for a lot of programs in the original INF file if you remember, which have now been removed. Personally I think we can do without the whole option, I bet hardly anyone actually used it!

As you probably gathered, I completely overlooked what happened with the Mouse Properties "Options" tab when UI_Theme was changed between "0" and "1"! D'oh! As you say, with "0" it launches the control panel from ETDmcpl.dll, and with "1" it launches ETDAniconf.exe as double clicking the icon does. The latter is presumably the better option then, as we surely don't want different control panels launching depending on where they're launched from!

Yes, in mode 3 the option to enable and disable the touchpad from the icon did work. That function is also in the extra Mouse Properties tab when present. "Enable Slow-Motion Pointer" didn't seem to do anything though as far as I could see. Re-introducing the ETDmcpl.dll file has re-enabled the extra tab, as expected. This gives access to the USB mouse detection and icon choices again. I still can't identify any obvious difference in behaviour between UI_Style=0 and UI_Style=1.

I tried all the different settings for UI_Theme with the following results - 0 - Elan-style icon, double click launches ETDAniconf.exe, no Mouse Properties tab, icon identifies when hovered over as "Elan Pointing Device", right click options "My Favorites Setting", "Property of Touch-Pad" (launches Mouse properties). 1 - Elan-style icon, double click launches ETDAniconf.exe, no Mouse Properties tab, icon identifies when hovered over as "Elan Pointing Device", right click options "My Favorites Setting", "Property of Touch-Pad" (launches Mouse properties). All seems to be the same as setting "0". 2 - Elan-style icon, double click launches Mouse Properties. no Mouse Properties tab, icon identifies when hovered over as "Dell Touchpad", right click options "Touchpad properties" (launches ETDAniconf.exe), "About" (launches a driver information window) and "Remove Icon" (there seems to be no way of returning it!) In fact it doesn't come back if you revert the UI_Theme setting either, the only way to return the icon is apparently to set HKCU\Software\Elantech\OtherSetting\IconType manually to "0", where it have ben set to "2", which is presumably the "no icon" setting. 3 - "Dual Mode" icon, double click pops up the options "Touchpad Settings" (containing "Enable Tapping" and "Enable Slow-Motion Pointer"), "Disable Touchpad", TrackPoint Settings", "Disable TrackPoint" (both irrelevant with this hardware), and "Advanced Settings" (which launches Mouse Properties). Right clicking gives "Remove UltraNav icon from the system tray". No Mouse Properties tab. Icon identifies when hovered over as "Touchpad = Pointer, TrackPoint = Pointer". 4 - Elan-style icon, double click launches Mouse Properties, no Mouse Properties tab, icon identifies when hovered over as "Samsung Pointing Device", right click option "Property of TouchPad", which launches Mouse Properties. 5 - Asus-style icon, double click launches Mouse Properties, no Mouse Properties tab, icon identifies when hovered over as "Asus Smart Gesture", no right click options. 6 - Elan-style icon, double click launches Mouse Properties, no Mouse Properties tab, icon identifies when hovered over as "Elan Pointing Device", right click options "My Favorites Setting", "Property of Touch-Pad" (launches Mouse properties). So, unless we're going to re-introduce ETDMcpl.dll we need to use setting "0" or "1", as they are the only way of getting anything useful when double clicking the icon. Reintroducing ETDMcpl.dll would presumably get the Mouse Properties tab back though, which will regain access to the function to disable the touchpad when a mouse is active, and to change the style of the icon or remove it, with a way to put it back again!

Hmm, I think someone touched a nerve there, their post was not in any way worded as a complaint, just a question! Reading between the lines, I suspect that the Pale Moon devs know they've got a real problem there, and their knee jerk reaction to a question about it was to become very defensive and dismissive.

Do you know Den, I had absolutely no idea that worked on Windows XP! I knew it worked on 8.1 and 10, but assumed it was something that only came in with later versions of Windows, and I'd never bothered to actually try it on XP. Thank you so much, much easier than taking a photo! Cheers, Dave.

If that's for a screen grab then no, I haven't got anything installed on the XP side of the netbook capable of doing that. A photo is quite good enough for this purpose though!

With the Elan-style icon, right clicking gives the option of this (sorry about the reflection of the light!) Clicking "Property of Touch-Pad" brings up the Mouse Properties (which still has no extra tab incidentally). This actually all looks rather good to me!

This is what I call the Asus-style icon. And this is what I call the Elan-style icon. As you can see, they look quite different. Changing the UI_Theme from "5" to "0" results in the Elan-style icon, as expected, and double clicking on it runs ETDAniConf, which is what we want, no spoofing file names needed! Everything still seems to work, so surely that is much better? Here are the two registry files, saved immediately after a clean install, with no changes made to anything. HKCUElantechCleanInstall.reg HKLMElantechCleanInstall.reg

Well, all I can say is that's what it is! I will do a clean install and let you have the reg files so you can see what it is before any settings are changed. Right clicking on the system tray icon does nothing, and never has with the Asus-style ones, only the Elan-style ones do anything when right clicked, and it's a "favourites" function IIRC.

Yes sorry, I was only looking in HKCU\Software\Elantech\SmartPad, in HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Elantech\SmartPad "Tap_One_Finger_Enable" is not present, only "Tap_Enable". This is set to "1", even though the function is not actually enabled at the moment. HKCU\Software\Elantech\OtherSetting\DisableWhenDetectUSBMouse worked fine as it should do if it was set to "1" in the registry. I had to stop and start ETDCtrl.exe for the change to take effect. Unfortunately, just changing it back to "0" and stopping and starting ETDCtrl.exe again didn't return things to normal, and left me with a dead touchpad, whether the mouse was connected or not. It seems that you have to enable the touchpad by unplugging the USB mouse with it set to "1", and then set it back to "0". Then stopping and starting ETDCtrl.exe returns things to normal with both touchpad and mouse working. The file re-naming trick works, as it did before, and double clicking the system tray icon now runs ETDAniconf. Whether that's a good answer I don't know! I will try a complete uninstall again, making sure that all files and registry entries are completely removed, and then reinstall the driver, and without changing any settings, I will export the two main HKLM and HKCU registry keys for you to have a look at, so you can check that their starting points are as you expect them to be.

Interesting. The "Tap_One_Finger_Enable" entry is certainly there, and it's set to "1", but "Tap_Enable" is set to "0" and that seems to be the "live" parameter. This is all looking very promising, but there are a couple of things perhaps worth mentioning. Firstly double clicking the system tray icon still launches the Mouse Properties, which is now pointless as there is no access to the settings through it. Also, we seem to have lost the setting to disable the touchpad when a mouse is plugged it. That is there in some of the control panels, but not the one we're using at the moment. It was also available on the Mouse Properties tab, along with the icon style selection, which we've now lost. It's not something that I would ever enable, but it would be nice to have it back if it's possible.

That's much better! In fact it seems as if your reg files are not needed, as I can switch the tap to click function off and on with the control panel just fine. Is that unexpected? The only section still not functional is the "Button" section, but as I said a while ago, that could be because it will only work with a touchpad which has two physical buttons, which mine apparently does not have.

Our posts crossed! Thanks, I'll try that new INF out and report back later.

Yes ETDAniconf.exe did end up in the System32 folder! Also in the System32\DrvStore folder along with the other installed files, but I guess that's normal.

No, there is nothing extra in the Windows Control Panel. Aniconf.exe isn't in the Elantech folder. The only difference from before is that ETDmcpl.dll is no longer there. Those registry entries aren't there either, so none of that has worked for some reason.

OK, I installed the driver with the new INF. It seems to work fine, now with the Asus-style icon in the system tray as expected. There is no access to any settings now though through the Windows UI. The "tap to click" function can now be switched off and on with your registry files, the fly in the ointment being that you have to reboot for the behaviour to actually change!

Sorry for the delay, I'm sorting out some Windows 8.1 issues at the moment! I'll try installing the XP driver with that INF later on and get back to you. Cheers, Dave.

OK, here's the current version of the INF. ETD.inf

At the moment, your INF doesn't add ETDAniConf.exe to the Elantech folder. Perhaps it needs to be modified to include it. Incidentally, the machine hanging for about 90 seconds on "loading your personal settings" was no better when the driver was uninstalled, so is nothing to do with this!

I feel a bit shamed now, you're still putting so much time and effort into this, and I'm talking about giving up! I agree with you about ETDAniConf, if it can be fully implemented it is probably the best control panel to go with, in terms of looks and versatility. If we use it instead of ETDSimpleUI it will dispense with the AVI video files bloat, and get rid of any dependence on .NET being installed, which is surely a good thing! I guess the other Elan control panel, the one inside ETDmcpl.dll, will always have to be there as that file will probably always be needed, but it doesn't need to be visible. However, I've never seen ETDAniConf launch from the Mouse Properties "Options" tab, it always seems to be the ETDmcpl.dll one. That's probably the first thing to fix if we're going to use ETDAniConf.

Thanks, so it wasn't just me then! I eventually left it scanning overnight, and in the morning I found that it had found the updates. How long it actually look I have no way of telling of course. All installed fine, and my policy with MSO.DLL now is that if it's replaced with another bad version, which it was, I just replace the bad version of the file with the last good version. All comes good then, and it stops any nags about the update not being installed.

Has anyone managed to get today's updates from Microsoft Update? I've tried several times, but it's just scanning and scanning again like it was doing a year or two ago, and never finding anything. I have got the yellow shield in the system tray so I could of course install the updates that way, but I'm just puzzled as to why Microsoft Update doesn't seem to be working again.

Point taken as always, but how long do we keep on exploring every single possible driver function and see if it can be made to work in the driver we've got? That could take months! I still think in principle that only the functions included by default in driver version 11.4.14.1 should be guaranteed to work, as long as the hardware is capable, as we are using it with hardware it wasn't designed for of course. Others like the magnifier function (which actually does work as a standalone program, and it's very good) were not included in that driver, so maybe the control panel bundled with that driver doesn't support it, or surely as I said about the tap corners, it would have been included in the first place. We've seen that on some control panels functions can be shown or hidden depending on registry settings, which is fascinating of course, but unless they work straight away, experimenting to see if they can be made to work either by more registry tweaks of file additions/substitutions, or both, could be a very lengthy process, and if there are a lot of them will take a very long time indeed, with no guarantee of success with any of them. I know I'm sounding as if I've had enough of this and want to call it a day, but I do fear that we are getting near to the point of diminishing returns, if we aren't there already. I almost don't dare to say this, but having had success beyond my wildest dreams with the touchpad driver, I'm itching a bit to have another go with the graphics driver! Of course this will be a much bigger task, which seriously may be impossible, because as far as I know there were never any XP compatible drivers for that generation of graphics hardware, unlike the touchpad where there were plenty of XP Elan drivers in the past, and touchpad hardware almost certainly doesn't vary nearly as much as graphics hardware. What do you think jaclaz? Time now for another different challenge?

I suppose now would be a good time to review where we're heading with this now. We now have a driver which works absolutely fine for all the basic touchpad functions, which is more than I ever dreamed we would have when we started out. I fact if you remember I was all for giving up on this on several occasions, thank goodness I didn't! I guess what we have to decide now is just how much of the driver's possible additional functionality we want to explore and try to implement. The drivers for these touchpads have been so customised (I would say butchered around!) by the various computer manufacturers who have used them, that it's become as far as I can see almost impossible to tell what functions will work with what driver versions and hardware versions, and the plethora of different customised control panels is no help with this of course! We don't know that functions like corner tapping will ever work with the driver we've got, the fact that it wasn't implemented by default in the 11.4.14.1 driver that we're using as our base would seem to imply to me that it never was intended to work in that driver, otherwise surely it would have been included? That doesn't mean that it can't be got to work of course, and the same goes for things like the magnifier, but just how far should we go before declaring that enough is enough?